Riot grrls everywhere will smile on 9/17 with the release of the 1981 rock flick "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains". The film is a cult classic - it is rumored that Nirvana wanted to remake the soundtrack years ago. The cast included members of The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Laura Dern, and a pre-"Streets of Fire" Diane Lane.
Found this quote from Bikini Kill's Tobi Vail - "It is the most realistic and profound film I have ever seen." And she should know!
[ 27. August 2008, 19:59: Message edited by: Valley ]
Posted by Muffy Tepperman (Member # 1551) on :
Bikini Kill are from my area Valley!
How have I not heard of this movie.........I had a stint where alot of my friends were very much into the indie girl rockers.......any clips of the movie? Really? how have I not heard of this.......has everyone here lately been trying to seek out lesser known movies or what?
Posted by Valley (Member # 1322) on :
I've never heard of this before. Is it any good? You must tell me know!!!
Holy crap! did you see the opening scene? The guy that yells at her (her boss) and says you're fired??? Do you know who that is? It's Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek TNG)... Cool...
Now I'm intrigued...
Posted by Muffy Tepperman (Member # 1551) on :
cool Valley looks like I can pretty much watch the whole movie on youtube if i want too......i'm intrigued!
Posted by 80'sRocked (Member # 6979) on :
But of course....another one I have not seen. Look how young she is. I'll have to get this one too.
Posted by Valley (Member # 1322) on :
"We're The Stains and we don't put out."
Muffy, tell me The Donnas don't sound just like The Stains. Ya think?
Posted by Riptide (Member # 457) on :
OMG, I only saw this once late at night, it's been really hard to track down. I remember watching it purely for the Clash/Pistols connection of Cook/Simonon, but was a nice surprise seeing Lane/Dern and Lahti in early performances. Nice to hear it has had a cult following all these years as I thought it was one of those eternally forgotten films.
Been kind of been on an 80's rock film kick of late, wonder if they will ever release the first decline of Western civilisation or Ughhh a music war on DVD.
Anyone else see these?
The Running Kind Smithereens Breaking Glass
Posted by NowhereGirl (Member # 465) on :
holy crap i read about this movie and haven't thought about it until seeing this post!
diane lane looks fierce!
AMAZON says it will be available on dvd in a few weeks. they have a trailer and everything.
Posted by Valley (Member # 1322) on :
NowhereGirl, I'm picking up the DVD, but you can watch the entire movie on YouTube if you prefer. I watched it last night and it was fun to see Diane Lane in this role.
Posted by logan5 (Member # 1467) on :
quote: Anyone else see these? The Running Kind Smithereens Breaking Glass
Vaguely recall Smithereens. Used to love Breaking Glass. Hazell O'Connor was a star over here for a while, she had hits with songs from the Breaking Glass soundtrack.
quote:diane lane looks fierce!
Nah, she just looks like a teenage girl with punky eye makeup... which I guess is what she was!
Posted by NowhereGirl (Member # 465) on :
nah..... she still looks fierce
and yes valley, it's a neat surprise to see lane in that kind of a role. i am looking forward to checking this one out, thanks. Posted by Valley (Member # 1322) on :
logan5, you might be right, but the 80's Diane Lane had a presence about her that was quite special in my opinion. This movie set the tone for what would later be seen in such movies as "The Outsiders" and "Streets of Fire".
Posted by Riptide (Member # 457) on :
I'm pretty sure I have that Time issue magazine with Diane Lane on the cover.
Posted by Kash (Member # 297) on :
I've never, in all my years, even heard the slightest whisper of this movie, the titles not too hot, but the movie must be worth a look. My first impressions were of a movie I saw a bit of a few years back called 'Prey For Rock n' Roll' with Gina Gershon and Drea De Matteo.
Remake it with Jessica Alba Posted by Spreadking (Member # 7280) on :
Great film.
Great music.
There is no debate, it's settled.
unlike global warming.
Posted by aTomiK (Member # 6575) on :
I need this movie...now!
Posted by Riptide (Member # 457) on :
It's still readily available right? Please don't tell me it's out of print or something.
Posted by aTomiK (Member # 6575) on :
It´s still available. Amazon and cduniverse have it.
It's well worth the money. I love this movie.
Posted by Muffy Tepperman (Member # 1551) on :
So I got to see Ladies and Gentleman the Fabulous Stains on the big screen last night...the only known rare 35mm print! It was awesome it was my first time seeing it ( I never watched it on youtube....I hate watching movies on youtube)
It was such an awesome movie! Diane Lane just steals the movie. She's so beautiful and charismatic. The music is great....it's funny....dramatic....just all around awesome!
It was part of a film festival here and hosted my two guys that wrote this book called:
Destroy all Movies
They had this awesome clip presentation before the film and i'm trying to see if they posted it anywhere online. It had so many 80's movies in it!
They were handing out these pins....how cool eh?
Posted by Crash (Member # 7484) on :
Love this thread! This is one of those lost treasures that you can't believe exists. A basically shelved film in the day, it sat in limbo for years because of the music rights. I had a VHS copy taped off of the USA Network's Night Flight, a program that was fairly cavalier with copyrights. I loaned it to a friend. And then the special edition was released, which I really should pick up.
Bonus points: Where was it filmed? And name two other movies filmed in the same city. :-)
[ 15. November 2010, 15:48: Message edited by: Crash ]
Posted by Valley (Member # 1322) on :
Crash .. I know the where it was filmed, but how about the name of the mall with that infamous escalator scene? .. btw, I don't know that answer.
Muffy.. so freakin' awesome that you got to see this underground flick on the big screen. Dig on those wicked pins!
Someone mentioned an uncredited Brent Spiner, but how about Elizabeth Daily as a hotel maid? Was she a Diane Lane stalker in the 80's.. Stains & Streets?
Posted by Crash (Member # 7484) on :
Valley, I'm sure that you know the answer to my filming location question--and it's not Vancouver, though some of the Fabulous Stains was filmed there. :-) Based on my research, I am going to wager that the escalator is in the Coquitlam Centre Mall in Coquitlam, British Columbia.
Posted by Valley (Member # 1322) on :
Crash .. the only reason that I knew that answer was because my buddy who's an actor did an episode of the "X-Files" there back in the 90's and I looked up Coquitlam as a filming location on imdb when told me where he was at .. and The Stains popped up.
Now that you've named the mall.. it states that "Juno" was filmed there too according to imdb.
Posted by Crash (Member # 7484) on :
And Stains was filmed in my hometown of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Why, you ask? Nancy Dowd who wrote Stains had a brother, Ned, who played hockey for the Johnstown Jets. She turned his hockey experiences into the screenplay for Slap Shot, filmed in Johnstown. She liked the town and wrote Stains around it but didn't like the film and took her name off of the credits. I believe she's billed as "Rob Morton."
And All the Right Moves is the other Johnstown film, of course. For years, Stains was the lost Johnstown film. While many of us remember when Diane Lane was in town filming, it never even played a theatre in town. I'm glad that it's finally found its cult. It was way ahead of its time.
Posted by Muffy Tepperman (Member # 1551) on :
Valley great points on E.G Daily!! I didn't know she was in this and whispered to my friend "it's E.G Daily" to only get the confused look of "who is that?" "you know Valley Girl and Pee Wee's big Adventure" haha
She was totally a Diane fan in both movies awesome point Valley! Posted by logan5 (Member # 1467) on :
quote:Valley great points on E.G Daily!! I didn't know she was in this and whispered to my friend "it's E.G Daily" to only get the confused look of "who is that?" "you know Valley Girl and Pee Wee's big Adventure" haha
There are some things that only we will understand Posted by Muffy Tepperman (Member # 1551) on :
I got ahold of the guys that wrote the book and here is a link to their awesome clip show they had put together....enjoy it's great!
That clip contains some great moments. I saw 'Liquid Sky' and 'Oddballs' in there (amongst others). Any clip like that is GOLD!
Posted by aTomiK (Member # 6575) on :
I bought the dvd and watched Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains while the site was down.
Of course i liked it, it has that early 80s magic feel. It was directed by Lou Adler who directed only two films, this one and the excellent Cheech and Chong film Up in Smoke.
Diane Lane was still very young when this was filmed but she looks very confident. Marin Kanter and Laura Dern did also good job as her bandmates. It was cool to see The Tubes singer Fee Waybill as the leader of The Metal Corpses band. Another Tubes man Vince Welnick was also in this one. I´m a huge The Tubes fan and own almost all their cd´s (still missing Love Bomb).¨ And all movies with Elizabeth Daily get my vote!
Media criticism, good music, cool locations (love canadian landscapes and small early 80s US factory towns) and you can also see classic Atari/Namco F-1 arcade in one scene. I just realised that Eastwood regular Bruce Surtees did the cinematography in Fabulous Stains so no wonder it looks awesome.
The dvd also includes this "happy ending" music video they filmed two years after the actual movie. It looks nice but feels unnecessary.
Posted by the young warrior (Member # 9554) on :
never seen this one atomik,it sounds really good,definitely would like to check it out!
Posted by Crash (Member # 7484) on :
Wonderful film, the Fabulous Stains. For years, it was almost impossible to see. Paramount fought with director Adler, the rock impressario, and shelved the film after a token release. They never released it to VHS because the rights to the music were too expensive. I caught a showing on the late, lamented Night Flight, one of the greatest TV shows of all time, in the mid 80s and taped it. (As I noted in an eariler post, Night Flight was pretty cavalier about copyrights and licensing fees since it ran in the wee hours when only drunks and lunatics were watching. ) That VHS was the crown jewel in my collection.
I loved telling people about it because no one even knew that this thing existed. (There's a Bill Murray film called Nothing Lasts Forever from around 1984 that no one has seen. MGM hates it and has never released it in any format. They did a retrospective of Murray's career in New York a few years ago, and Murray had to pay MGM out of his own pocket to get them to rent him a print--for his own retrospective! It's brilliant, but that's a subject for another thread.) Diane Lane has a nude scene, and that supporting cast, including Ray Winstone, is amazing.
Here's some trivia, guys. Stains is an "unofficial sequel" to Slap Shot. If you listen carefully to Diane Lane's interview at the beginning, she lives in Charlestown, Pennsylvania, same setting as the Paul Newman film. Some stuff was filmed in Johnstown, Pennsylvania too, though most of Stains was filmed in British Columbia. And the screenplay is by "Rob Morton," a fake name for the brilliant Nancy Dowd, writer of Slap Shot. She took her name off of the film because of all the studio interference.
Finally, there was enough of a buzz, and it got an official special edition release. It deserved it. It's one of the best films about rock and roll ever.
[ 30. April 2015, 20:17: Message edited by: Crash ]
Posted by Nostalgic for the '80's (Member # 37454) on :
Saw "The Fabulous Stains" on DVD (now long OOP) back in the 200X's - great film, and almost unheard of these days. As always, Diane Lane was amazing here, and there was a lot of good hard rock music featured as well.
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